Daily news focus

Many UK healthcare professionals still “panic” when they come across a case of female genital mutilation (FGM), according to a leading specialist midwife who has called for improvements to training and services.

Your Career Gateway

Nursing Times events to look out for in 2019
Nursing Times Careers Live will return in 2019 with seven events across England while the Student Nursing Times Awards will celebrate the best in nursing education – entries close soon

It is as an orally active agent that targets the prostacyclin pathway and has been licensed for the long-term treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension in adult patients with WHO functional class (FC) II-III.

It has been approved for use either as a combination therapy in patients insufficiently controlled with an endothelin receptor antagonist (ERA) and/or a phosphodiesterase type 5 (PDE-5) inhibitor, or as monotherapy in patients who are not candidates for these therapies.

The safety and efficacy of selexipag was evaluated in the GRIPHON trial, a long-term, placebo-controlled study involving 1,156 patients with symptomatic pulmonary arterial hypertension.

Patients were exposed to the drug for up to 4.2 years, with a median duration of 1.4 years.

The study found the drug delayed the time to the first morbidity or mortality event compared to placebo.

Diane Moran, a pulmonary hypertension clinical nurse specialist at Mater Misericordiae University Hospital in Dublin was one of the GRIPHON trial co-ordinators.

She said the selexipag represented a “major step forward” in disease management, offering patients an oral treatment that effectively targeted the prostacyclin pathway.

“Pulmonary arterial hypertension is a progressive and devastating disease, so the availability of new and innovative therapies to delay disease progression is absolutely fundamental for this community,” she said.

She noted that the “next step” was to secure approval from bodies such as the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and the Scottish Medicines Consortium.

Have your say

Please remember that the submission of any material is governed by our Terms and Conditions and by submitting material you confirm your agreement to these Terms and Conditions. Links may be included in your comments but HTML is not permitted.

In News

Unlimited access to Nursing Times...

...gives you the confidence to be the best nurse you can be. Our online learning units, clinical practice articles, news and opinion stories, helps you increase your skills and knowledge and improves your practice.